Soldiers are expected to stand through karakia (prayers), take part in pōwhiri (ritual welcomes), join in waiata (ceremonial chants), perform haka (ritual war dances), and in some cases engage in hongi (a physical ritual exchange). These are not passive observations. They are embodied acts—spoken, physical, and repeated—woven into daily military life. And when those acts are expected, normalised, or quietly enforced through hierarchy and peer pressure, the line into coercion has already been crossed.
That’s where the legal problem becomes unavoidable. Section 13 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. Section 15 protects the right to manifest religion or belief—but just as importantly, it protects the right not to manifest it. Section 19 guarantees freedom from discrimination, including on the basis of belief. In a military context, where refusing participation can affect cohesion, reputation, or career progression, “voluntary” becomes a fiction. The state cannot sidestep these protections by relabelling spiritual practice as “culture.” If it walks like a ritual and functions like a ritual, then compelling it—directly or indirectly—runs straight into the wall of those rights. Add to that Section 5, which requires any limitation on rights to be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, and you’re left with a serious question: what operational necessity justifies embedding ritual compliance into a modern army?
And this is where people need to stop pretending this is neutral policy. It aligns with the broader push toward co-governance structures, where ancestry and worldview are given institutional weight inside state systems. Call it what you like—many will recognise it as a form of legalised racial preference, dressed up in softer language. But a military cannot function as a laboratory for ideological experiments. The solution is not complicated, and it doesn’t require endless “conversations.” It requires a line in the sand: make all ritual participation strictly opt-in, with zero career consequence; strip compulsory elements out of training and official duties; reaffirm the armed forces as a secular institution bound first and foremost by equal rights under law; and, if necessary, legislate that boundary explicitly so it cannot be bypassed by policy. That’s how you restore clarity. That’s how you protect the individual. And that’s how you stop this from embedding any deeper than it already has.
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Video credit: The Platform NZ
■ Michael Laws
EXPOSED! NZ Army Using Bi-Culturalism To Impose Māori Mono-Culturalism
That’s where the legal problem becomes unavoidable. Section 13 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 guarantees freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. Section 15 protects the right to manifest religion or belief—but just as importantly, it protects the right not to manifest it. Section 19 guarantees freedom from discrimination, including on the basis of belief. In a military context, where refusing participation can affect cohesion, reputation, or career progression, “voluntary” becomes a fiction. The state cannot sidestep these protections by relabelling spiritual practice as “culture.” If it walks like a ritual and functions like a ritual, then compelling it—directly or indirectly—runs straight into the wall of those rights. Add to that Section 5, which requires any limitation on rights to be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, and you’re left with a serious question: what operational necessity justifies embedding ritual compliance into a modern army?
And this is where people need to stop pretending this is neutral policy. It aligns with the broader push toward co-governance structures, where ancestry and worldview are given institutional weight inside state systems. Call it what you like—many will recognise it as a form of legalised racial preference, dressed up in softer language. But a military cannot function as a laboratory for ideological experiments. The solution is not complicated, and it doesn’t require endless “conversations.” It requires a line in the sand: make all ritual participation strictly opt-in, with zero career consequence; strip compulsory elements out of training and official duties; reaffirm the armed forces as a secular institution bound first and foremost by equal rights under law; and, if necessary, legislate that boundary explicitly so it cannot be bypassed by policy. That’s how you restore clarity. That’s how you protect the individual. And that’s how you stop this from embedding any deeper than it already has.
---
Video credit: The Platform NZ
■ Michael Laws
EXPOSED! NZ Army Using Bi-Culturalism To Impose Māori Mono-Culturalism
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John Robertson is a patriotic New Zealander who frequently posts on Facebook.
5 comments:
What all this could mean is an army, full of part-maori ideas and aspirations, ideologically anti non-maori and ready to take over the colonialists at the behest of a government or dictatorial prime minister as seen throughout the world, especially in Africa where racial and tribal demarcations have been a source of fighting and massacres. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Now a human right issue - clearly coercion.
This a test that the National led coalition is manifestly failing.
The maori conquest of NZ by the promotion of an obsolete stone age language will go down as one of the great achievement anomalies in world history. That maori were able and encouraged to openly prepare the army from within for support of the insurrection will add to the marvel.
What did our forebears fight and die for, they wasted that effort.
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